


Baby Darling Dollface Honey

by FarenMaddox



Category: Nabari no Ou
Genre: M/M, spoilers up to chapter 43
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-20
Updated: 2013-01-20
Packaged: 2017-11-27 02:13:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/656942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FarenMaddox/pseuds/FarenMaddox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gau might never have known he had a thing for scars if he hadn't fallen for a swordsman</p>
            </blockquote>





	Baby Darling Dollface Honey

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Uakari](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Uakari/gifts).



Raikou hesitated, right at the beginning, every time.  Gau had almost gotten used to it.

This was different.

Gau was on his back, had his legs parted so Raikou could kneel between them, and those perfect hands were stretched out and grasping the buttons on his shirt, but they were frozen there.  His eyes were locked onto his own fingers so completely that Gau couldn’t help a glance down at them—as if he needed to look to know what was wrong.  Such beautiful hands.  Such clever fingers, with scars on every knuckle.  His hands were built for fine work, and so capable of delicacy, but marred by the dirt under torn nails and the callouses that spread themselves thickly across his palms and up the insides of his fingers.  Gau almost thought he loved Raikou’s hands better than anything else about him.

They were just trembling there, a button almost slipped free of its hole, but not quite.  Gau was alarmed.

Usually, the hesitation when he reached for Gau was so slight that it might have gone unnoticed by others.  But Gau had never seen this man hesitate in regards to _anything_ and so he did notice.  That slight softening in his gesture, that tiny stutter in his movement, every time.

This time, it would have been obvious to anyone.

Gau made a little “tch” of impatience that he couldn’t help.  First they’d been busy, then he’d been worried about tearing out his stitches, and then they couldn’t be alone . . . Now, out here living in a tent, they _finally_ had the peace and privacy for sex.  Which they had not had in _weeks_.  And _now_ Raikou suddenly needed to do this?

But he was gentle, in a way he only knew how to be with Raikou and with no one else.  He wasn’t actually a very nice person, he didn’t think.  But this was Raikou, and that made it different.

He dropped his own hands over the ones he loved so much, caressing just one of his fingers for a moment.

“It doesn’t look that—”  He cut himself off, because it _did_ look that bad and Gau could hardly lie about it when Raikou was about to see for himself.  “You have to see it sometime.  It doesn’t bother me at all.”

And maybe that’s what made this time, their first time after Gau had gotten out of the hospital, so very different, for him.  This was the first time Gau wasn’t ashamed of the body Raikou would find underneath this shirt.

 

* * *

 

It had been obvious to Gau even at the very beginning of things, the actual literal beginning, with him on his knees looking up at his saviour and not sure if the tug in his belly was destiny or just burning lust.  All thoughts of other human beings past, present, or future fell away in that moment that he still barely understood he was not about to die.  He’d stood up knowing that he would have Raikou, or no one.

It had still taken the better part of a year before he got what he wanted.

It was baffling, to be honest.  Raikou lived so far outside of the conventions and rules of society that Gau would never believe he kept his hands to himself simply because Gau was fourteen.  Indeed, from what Gau could gather once they _did_ start having sex, and Raikou would lose himself in the heat of the moment and bury his face in Gau’s skin and let words tumble forth as though seeking absolution . . . He would have held back just as much if Gau had been the one who was older.

It wasn’t his age. It was simply that Raikou believed his hands were too stained and ugly to touch somebody like Gau.  He’d said as much, with his lips buried in the sweat-dampened skin of Gau’s neck.  Only after falling prey to temptation would he confess what had held him back.  Raikou never did anything in the right order, Gau had thought fondly in that moment, clutching Raikou’s head tight and crying out with pleasure, all of fifteen years old and certain that his life had reached its pinnacle just then.

It was Raikou’s scars that had done it, in the end.

Gau had been obvious and insistent about his desire, doing his clumsy but wholehearted best to win Raikou over, knowing that somehow he was the only one that would really do for Raikou in the end.  He was far enough outside the world of the nabari to be a refuge, but close enough to be familiar.  Raikou had never said he understood that Gau’s flirtations and overtures were serious, but he certainly managed to evade them well.

It had happened one night when they were both weary but Raikou especially so because he’d worked at his paper job all day before they’d been sent out on a mission.  Raikou didn’t actually watch t.v. but Gau did, and Raikou would occasionally fling himself down beside Gau when he was ensconced in a show and sleep there.  It was like that, after their mission, with Raikou face-down into a cushion and Gau absentmindedly stroking his arm where it was sprawled beside him.

The show had been boring, so maybe that was to blame.

Gau had started paying more attention to Raikou’s arm than he was paying to the television, first admiring the lean, ropy muscles, then moving his attention to the scars.  Raikou had many.  It was to be expected, maybe, from someone who’d been handling a sword since he was old enough to hold onto it without falling down.  Raikou would no doubt say that each one was a lesson.  But Gau felt melancholy, tracing his fingers over various ghostly wounds.  Each one was an old pain that he had borne on his own, in silence.

He didn’t want Raikou to be alone anymore.  He was always eager to take part in whatever Raikou was doing, and now he wanted a part in these hurts.  Wasn’t a shared pain easier to bear?

He’d felt like he was in a trance, when he dropped his head down and began to kiss Raikou’s arm.  He’d thought the older boy was asleep, and he’d been more gentle than he even knew he could be.  His lips brushed softly over each knuckle of his fingers, nibbled a moment at the wrist, and moved from tiny white line to thicker pink line and up Raikou’s arm.  He hadn’t noticed the fine hairs that were beginning to stand up off Raikou’s skin, or the tension in Raikou’s body.  He’d been too intent on his work.

Until he chanced a glance at Raikou’s face and found his eyes open and staring.

He’d frozen, his lips still pressed to a thick weal of a scar near Raikou’s elbow, maybe from catching a blade there in a battle where his own sword hadn’t been quite fast enough.  He’d probably looked an utter idiot, he thought later, with his eyes wide and lips smashed in shock against Raikou’s skin.

“What are you doing?” Raikou had asked in his quiet voice.  His hair, undone and newly dyed pink with Gau’s assistance, was spilling into his eyes, but he didn’t blink or move to brush it away.

Gau couldn’t think of the words to explain himself, so he tucked Raikou’s hair back for him.

“You really think my scars are that interesting?”

He sounded amused, but Gau knew better.  His posture was too stiff.

“I think they’re perfect,” he muttered, his cheeks flushing, and then he and Raikou’s faces were so close that it seemed silly not to, so he’d stretched forward and put his lips to better purpose, kissing Raikou’s stunned mouth.  “But I wish you didn’t have to hurt so much to get them,” he added, while they were too close to be looking at each other and therefore it would be less embarrassing.

Raikou’s arm locked over his back and kept him from retreating.

“Gau,” he said, his voice laced with his own strange brand of pained amusement.

All he had to do was shift himself infinitesimally closer, and it suddenly broke the dam.  Raikou was all over him, kissing his face and neck, tugging at his clothes, flipping him over, biting at him, frantic.

Gau hated it when Raikou took his shirt off.  Raikou shirtless was a wonder, the very picture of male beauty, with skin taut over lean muscles.  Gau looked like what he was.  A kid. Pale and scrawny and unscarred and hairless and skinny and ugly.  He wanted Raikou too desperately to stop him, but he hid his face and purposefully did not look at Raikou’s eyes to see disappointment in them.

Still, it was worth it.  Raikou was rough and wild and selfish, and Gau thrilled at it, at the way he had to snatch his own pleasure between cries of mild pain when fingers dug bruisingly hard into him or a thrust of Raikou’s hips literally sent him sprawling.  He was deliciously sore afterward.  He didn’t feel harmed.  He felt valuable.

Totally worth it.

 

* * *

 

It had been the same ever since.  Raikou would want him, would reach for him, but with a slight pause as he did, as if he must remind himself every time that to do this was to sully something precious and he was adding another mark in the book of his damnation.

It had taken Gau up until now, this moment, to understand the depths of Raikou’s self-hatred.  It had taken the fight, the wound, the hospital, to truly grasp it.  And now they were stuck here, because what had happened seemed to have sapped Raikou somehow of his signature ability to do whatever he wanted with utter confidence.

Finally, Gau unbuttoned the shirt himself.  He was still the same, just sixteen and skinny and white and pathetic.  But now . . .

Raikou’s trembling fingers touched the scar at one end, near his hip, and traced it across his chest almost to his opposite shoulder.  It wasn’t quite a killing blow, but a near thing.  Gau had never been so fiercely proud of anything in his life as he was of this scar.  It was pink and thick and shiny and _aggressively_ big and ugly.  It would fade but never disappear, and it would always be there as a reminder of that day, and not just that day but the days after where Gau had lingered and fought his way back to this man.  The man he loved.

 _Loved?_   Yes, loved, certainly, or maybe just worshiped.  Love or worship . . . It was all the same to him.  They were lovers and partners in all things and could not be separated.  Gau sure as _hell_ wasn’t going to let Raikou’s guilt over this scar stand in the way of that.

Maybe his pride showed on his face, because Raikou looked up at him and his face was comically startled by what he seemed to see.  His eyebrows shot up and his mouth hung slack.  Gau was burning with the flush flooding into his cheeks but he pushed his shoulders back, the small amount that laying on a blanket on the rough ground in the middle of nowhere in a tent would allow him, just to emphasize the lurid scar a little more.  He was proud of this scar, and he was content with the way things were.  In a tent, on the ground.  With him.

Raikou’s head dropped down, faded-out pink hair that was almost blond again tickling his skin, but Gau did not squirm.  Raikou’s lips dropped to the scar, right in the middle of his chest, and trembled on the first kiss.

This was why it must be Gau for him, and no one else.  There _was_ no one else that Raikou would ever allow to see him hesitate.

Raikou’s lips moved down his belly, following the scar.  _Oh_ , it was sensitive.  Gau hadn’t realized how incredibly sensitive the just-healed skin would be.  Just the touch of Raikou’s lips brought so much sensation that the cold and hard ground simply ceased to exist.  He arched his back with a sharp, muffled cry.

Raikou paused, seeming surprised, looking up at him.

“What are you _doing_?” Gau gasped.  “Don’t _stop_.”

It broke the spell of guilt on him, somehow.  Raikou began to smile that delicious, unholy smile.  Gau watched it creep over his face and shivered with anticipation.  His head dropped down again, to the top edge of the scar, and began licking, sucking, biting his way back down.  Slowly.

Gau had many faults, no doubt, but at least he was consistent.  He wasn’t any quieter in bed than he was in the rest of the world.  He mewled and gasped and muttered, smacked Raikou on the head at one point for biting too hard, dug his fingers into the blanket beneath him and whimpered.  Raikou got to the bottom and Gau immediately lifted his hips, greedy to have his pants taken off him and for them to get on with it.

Raikou didn’t, though.  Not yet.  First he lifted his head, his own saliva thick on his lower lip, and crawled up Gau’s body to lay the two of them flush together, burying his face in Gau’s neck.  Complete with saliva, Gau noted, less than pleased.

“It’s beautiful,” Raikou muttered.

He usually saved this part for later, when he was buried to the hilt inside Gau and spent with climax.  Well, he was always doing things in the wrong order, wasn’t he?  Gau’s hand crept up and soothed over his back.

“I know,” he said.

This giant pink thing, ropy and violent, splitting his torso nearly in half . . . It made him feel attractive.  Sure of himself.  Not equal, never that.  But bigger, somehow.  Raikou must have heard it in his words, and puffed out a chuckle into the skin of his neck.  Gau turned his head, giving him better access to the skin there in a silent request to get back to business.

Raikou bit his ear sharply, dropped a happy kiss on his lips when he opened them to shout in consternation, and then sat up again.

“I’m going to wreck you now,” he said thoughtfully, in that voice that sent their enemies running away shrieking for mercy.

“Finally,” Gau muttered.

 

* * *

 

It wasn’t terribly cold the next morning, but cold enough that Raikou pretended to be asleep for a long time to have an excuse to stay huddled up together under their blankets.  Gau had work to do today, and so did Raikou, so when he woke up he immediately wriggled out of Raikou’s grasp and got the blankets away from his whining companion.  Waking up in the morning was like this most of the time, honestly.  Raikou was so lazy about getting out of bed.

When he started buttoning up his shirt, Raikou’s hand flashed out and caught one side of him.

“Don’t put it on,” he said thickly, sleep still in his voice.  A finger dragged over the scar.

Gau glared at him.  “It’s too cold to go around without a shirt on,” he rasped, and cleared his throat.  Sore.  He really ought to learn to stop screaming so much.  “Now hurry up.  We’re not going to take measurements at the site until we’ve eaten, and I’m not making breakfast by myself.”

He stood up and limped out of the tent, pulling his coat on and wincing with every step he took.  He wanted this new home built already so that next time Raikou wanted to wreck him, he’d get to sleep on something less lumpy and rocky afterward.

He didn’t even notice the stupid, goofy grin he was wearing.

 

 


End file.
